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Author Topic: Age related education  (Read 26353 times)
Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #60 on: June 12, 2017, 09:47:46 am »

That sort of thing isn't unique to Montessori schooled children

Maybe not, but it is certainly something that might be expected from the collaborative nature of Montessori education. In particular, since they are divided into mixed age groups (0-3 years, 3-6 years ,6-9 years, 9-12, etc), each child gets the experience of being both the pupil during the beginning of a phase and the experience of being a guide for younger children towards the end of a phase. It is towards the end of a phase I think they develop themselves to become more considerate. Just like older siblings often are more considerate and responsible.



If I disagree with anything about the Montessori education, it must be the curriculum. After all, she lived 100 years ago, and things have changed somewhat since then. For example, I doubt that they teach kids to use Linux, which I think is a good idea. I also don't think they teach kids 4 languages from they are 0-3 years old, even though they do have an emphasis on oral language skills then. It is clearly possible for children to learn 4 languages, since there are ethnic groups today where everybody is quadrilingual.

EDIT: I am rewriting my entire education plan, in order to Montessori's mixed age groups (0-3 years, 3-6 years ,6-9 years, 9-12, etc)
« Last Edit: June 12, 2017, 10:24:22 pm by Zanthius » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #61 on: June 13, 2017, 09:52:45 am »

Something like this maybe:

Age 0 to 3 - The Language Phase
  • 1st Oral Language
  • 2nd Oral Language
  • 3rd Oral Language
  • 4th Oral Language

Age 3 to 6 - The Practical Phase
  • Learning to count
  • Learning to read and write
  • Learning to use tablets
  • Learning to swim
  • Learning to ride a bike
  • Learning to Paint   
  • Molecular building sets

Age 6 to 9 - The Basics Phase
  • Basic Algebra
  • Basic Physics
  • Basic Chemistry
  • Basic Biology
  • Basic Ethics
  • Monetargy games
  • Learning to use Linux

Age 9 to 12 - The Exotics Phase
  • Learning about Dinosaurs in the evolutionary history of life on Earth
  • Learning about Black Holes in cosmology
  • Learning about Multidimensional Vector Spaces in Linear Algebra
  • Software engineering
  • Organic chemistry
  • Waves and Oscillations

Age 12 to 15 - The Popularity Phase
  • Learning about the benefits of Diversity
  • Learning about the benefits of Humility
  • Reading great works of fiction
  • Learning to play Music
  • Learning to Dance

Age 15 to 18 - The Abstract Phase
  • Calculus
  • Quantum Chemistry
  • The Theory of Relativity
  • Information Theory
  • Bayesian Machine Learning

Age 18 to 21 - The Reflective Phase
  • Learning about criteria for a healthy democracy, such as: the separation of powers, freedom of the press, investigative journalism.
  • Analyze what made different civilizations prosper and fail, to see commonalities, so that they can understand better how to make this society prosper.
  • Studying common cognitive biases
  • Civil rights
« Last Edit: June 14, 2017, 01:24:17 pm by Zanthius » Logged
Death 999
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #62 on: June 13, 2017, 08:56:51 pm »

I think that's a very awkward way to line things up. Especially delaying music and art until 12? Yikes.
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Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #63 on: June 13, 2017, 10:03:15 pm »

I think that's a very awkward way to line things up. Especially delaying music and art until 12? Yikes.

I think most parents send their kids to musicians at an early age, more for their own sake, than because the children are interested in it themselves. I have a friend who is a multi talented musician. He was "forced" by his parents (that are also musicians) to play the piano when he was very young, but claims that he didn't learn a lot, and didn't appreciate it much. It was later, during puberty (approximately when he was 12 years old), that he became interested in playing the guitar himself. That is when he claims to have learned most of what he knows today.  

I also think most people feel a deep connection to the music they used to listen to during puberty. Whatever I liked to listen to before puberty I cannot even remember.

Regarding art you might be more correct. I think several young children are interested in drawing/painting. I will move drawing/painting to the 3-6 practical phase.

This is what I have written in the introduction to the "Popularity Phase - 12 to 15 years"

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At this age, most people get into puberty, as the amount of sexual hormones increase. This can be a very difficult time for many teenagers, and they often become much more interested in their social environment, than in education. Therefore, instead of wasting time trying to teach them things they aren't interested in, they should mostly be allowed to do what they like, such as dancing and playing music. It is however also a period when lots of teenagers are harassed, or feel socially embarrassed because they are different. They should therefore have a course about the benefits of diversity, where they learn to appreciate differences. At this age, many parents also feel that their children won't listen to them anymore. It is therefore also an appropriate time for them to have a course about the benefits of humility.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2017, 10:35:49 pm by Zanthius » Logged
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #64 on: June 14, 2017, 12:01:50 am »

I don't think that effect is reliably existent, let alone strong enough to base educational theory on.

I mean, you're working with theory, spinning out idea after idea… how much practical work have you done actually teaching children? How many of the premises have you validated? It seems like you're being almost ancient-Greek about this, and I think you know enough Bayes to know that's not a great thing. Making elaborate wildly-different plans is not great for experimentation, because when things go wrong you only get hints as to which parts caused the problems.

Like, are you seriously heading back to Africa to be a teacher? If so, what sorts of preparation will actually be helpful when you're there? I think this curriculum layout where the entire theme shifts and suddenly the amount of math or art one is expected to do shifts radically… I just have a hard time seeing it work at a practical level.
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Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #65 on: June 14, 2017, 09:21:38 am »

I mean, you're working with theory, spinning out idea after idea… how much practical work have you done actually teaching children?

You are completely right about this. My wife has similar concerns, and she actually has experience with teaching children. I was thinking to maybe sign up for work at a Montessori school near where I live now, to get more experience with actually teaching children. But even then, I would never be able to pull something like this off by myself. I would need to collaborate with people that are much more experienced than me with teaching in a Montessori way. For some of the topics in the abstract phase, I would also need to collaborate with people that have more knowledge than me in those fields.

Making elaborate wildly-different plans is not great for experimentation, because when things go wrong you only get hints as to which parts caused the problems.

So, you are not a huge fan of string theory? Well... this is not exactly an experiment in physics or chemistry, where the experiment either is a success or a failure. I might argue that the traditional educational scheme is a complete failure based upon how ignorant most people are today, while other people might argue that it works well. For sure, lots of things are likely to be problematic with this education scheme.  But as long as we are dynamic, and change things we see don't work, it might quickly evolve to become more functional. One of the problems with the traditional/conservative approach, is that they often are reluctant to change, even when evidence is presented to them.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2017, 11:54:29 am by Zanthius » Logged
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #66 on: June 14, 2017, 01:36:48 pm »

Yes! Get that experience. Start with the beginning first.
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Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #67 on: June 17, 2017, 03:05:14 pm »

Yes! Get that experience. Start with the beginning first.

For me to become a successful Montessori teacher, of course I need lots of experience. I would also obtain more insight from such experience. But we live in a world today, where we also can learn from what others have done and published. Relying on scientific publications can in many ways be better than relying on personal experiences, particularly since we are prone to get biased perspectives from our own experiences. However, by relying only on scientific publications, one might lose touch with the ground.  A mixture of obtaining personal experiences, reading scientific publications, and using deductive reasoning, is probably the way to go.

Anyhow, I have updated the education page now, according to the age groups.

http://archania.org/a_student-centered_education_program.html
« Last Edit: June 19, 2017, 11:24:05 pm by Zanthius » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #68 on: June 24, 2017, 02:12:02 pm »

I found a course on coursera.org about "Critical Thinking for the Information Age"

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About this course: Most professions these days require more than general intelligence. They require in addition the ability to collect, analyze and think about data. Personal life is enriched when these same skills are applied to problems in everyday life involving judgment and choice. This course presents basic concepts from statistics, probability, scientific methodology, cognitive psychology and cost-benefit theory and shows how they can be applied to everything from picking one product over another to critiquing media accounts of scientific research. Concepts are defined briefly and breezily and then applied to many examples drawn from business, the media and everyday life. What kinds of things will you learn? Why it’s usually a mistake to interview people for a job. Why it’s highly unlikely that, if your first meal in a new restaurant is excellent, you will find the next meal to be as good. Why economists regularly walk out of movies and leave restaurant food uneaten. Why getting your picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated usually means your next season is going to be a disappointment. Why you might not have a disease even though you’ve tested positive for it. Why you’re never going to know how coffee affects you unless you conduct an experiment in which you flip a coin to determine whether you will have coffee on a given day. Why it might be a mistake to use an office in a building you own as opposed to having your office in someone else’s building. Why you should never keep a stock that’s going down in hopes that it will go back up and prevent you from losing any of your initial investment. Why it is that a great deal of health information presented in the media is misinformation.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware
« Last Edit: June 24, 2017, 02:14:44 pm by Zanthius » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #69 on: June 26, 2017, 11:44:36 am »

I think these are better titles for the age groups:



I think I can use the theory of flow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)), to argue that students should learn at their own speed, rather than forcing all students to progress through the curriculum at the same speed.

Now I have also added a section about flow:



http://archania.org/a_student-centered_education_program.html
« Last Edit: June 27, 2017, 10:46:23 am by Zanthius » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #70 on: July 30, 2017, 10:40:32 am »

« Last Edit: July 30, 2017, 12:47:13 pm by Zanthius » Logged
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #71 on: July 30, 2017, 05:54:11 pm »

I'm not sure what use it would be for people to really learn the medieval physics. They had all sorts of weird laws like the speed was the logarithm of the force - which are so easily falsifiable that a brief glance at them disprove them. They didn't know how to science yet, and their results were rubbish.
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Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #72 on: July 30, 2017, 06:16:08 pm »

I'm not sure what use it would be for people to really learn the medieval physics. They had all sorts of weird laws like the speed was the logarithm of the force - which are so easily falsifiable that a brief glance at them disprove them. They didn't know how to science yet, and their results were rubbish.

Ok. But if a certain outdated interpretation of physics is more intuitive to a human brain, it makes sense to spend some time on disproving it, since it is likely to be a common source of cognitive biases.

Quote
The reign of Aristotelian physics, the earliest known speculative theory of physics, lasted almost two millennia. After the work of many pioneers such as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Descartes and Newton, it became generally accepted that Aristotelian physics was neither correct nor viable.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics#Life_and_death_of_Aristotelian_physics

I am thinking that since it lasted for 2000 years, it is worth spending some time on disproving it. In particular, I am thinking that kids probably should perform something like Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment).

« Last Edit: July 30, 2017, 07:33:09 pm by Zanthius » Logged
Krulle
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #73 on: August 03, 2017, 02:40:53 pm »

It took so long to disprove, because nobody had the freedom to actually do any experiments.
The masses were not educated and did not even know these "medieval physics".
From there, you could not expect anyone to become a physicist to prove or disprove anything.

And most knowledge was heralded by the church, and ocne it reached a certain age, it became "untouchable".

Just look at the medicine teched in northern Italy at the end of the middle ages....

The still believed that the blood was made in the heart and pumped from there to the organs, who dissolved the blood to gain the energy needed.
The also knew how the lungs provided the blood with oxygen, and that without a functioning lung, your body would asphyxate.
They also knew that blood loss is a severy, deadly issue.
How are points 1 and 3 reconcileable? If one is true, then blood loss is a cost of energy, but the blood is made new with every heartbeat anyway, so not an issue as long as the organs are provided with energy soon again.Yet they knew it proved fatal anyway.
But the "doctors" and "professors" ignored simple experiments like measuring the volume of blood inside a body (of pigs, chickens,... , or in some cases of executed Humans) and the calculation of how much blood is needed.
If the heart is making the blood with every beat, why does the blood flow stop while the heart continues to beat a few times more?

They knew the measured data, and hand-waived it away as being part of the miracle of life and the power of god and...

Nah. It's something for later, when you teach the kids that believing is fine, but that so far data could explain everything better than "the power of god" could explain anything.

This way you can put historical teachings into a context. They need the context more than modern theories do.
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Zanthius
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Re: Age related education
« Reply #74 on: August 03, 2017, 04:47:54 pm »

Nah. It's something for later, when you teach the kids that believing is fine, but that so far data could explain everything better than "the power of god" could explain anything.

This way you can put historical teachings into a context. They need the context more than modern theories do.

I kinda agree with you, and there are way too many medieval theories to dismiss for young kids. It would probably just make them more confused. However, I do think experiments are important to learn, and kids usually think experiments are more interesting than theory. So, the Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment might be interesting for kids, even if we shouldn't necessarily delve too deeply into medieval physics.

I am currently on vacation together with my sister's kids, and I have tried to show them "Bill Nye The Science Guy", and "Sid the Science kid". I am much more impressed with Bill Nye The Science guy, even if it is meant for somewhat older kids. They are doing lots of nice experiments in Bill Nye The Science Guy, which I think would be highly suitable for kids. 
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